RF Wedding of the Week: A Southern Wedding for a New York Couple (Photos by Jade + Matthew)

April 23, 2014

By Laura Brauer

The act of posting an RF Wedding of the Week is always a good time, but the fun level really jumps off the charts when it’s the wedding of your friends. That’s why I’m so jazzed to show off this wedding of furniture designer Caleb Zipperer and Brienne Walsh (who you may know as a Rangefinder writer, and the author of A Brie Grows in Brooklyn). The couple traveled from Brooklyn to Savannah, where Caleb is from, and the whole day (which just happened two weeks ago!) was captured by Savannah-based photographers Jade and Matthew.

jadematthew_takepictures-0885Not only are Brie and Caleb highly photogenic, but Jade and Matthew are skilled shooters: she has an MFA in photography, while he studied architecture. The photography duo has been widely published in print and online, from The Knot to Style me Pretty, and was even a Top Knots award winner in our sister publication, PDN.

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Franke, who deserves her own caption.

jadematthew_takepictures-1455 jadematthew_takepictures-1039The ceremony, shot at Old Fort Jackson, came out lovely, but for Jade, the biggest challenge was lighting. “Half of the ‘alter’ area was in full bright sun, the other half was in shade,” Jade says. “So we had to work around that to make sure we got photos that represented their love and laughter while not letting the exposure overwhelm the emotions. We also had a pretty eager guest who wanted to stand up above the couple to take photos—you can pretty much see his shadow in every photo. We did our best to make him not the emphasis of the ceremony photos.”

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jadematthew_takepictures-1986 jadematthew_takepictures-2054 jadematthew_takepictures-2675 jadematthew_takepictures-2709Filling out the team’s gear bag were two Canon 5D Mark IIIs, two 5D Mark IIs, the 85mm 1.2, 35mm 1.4, 24mm 1.4, 135mm 2.0 and 50mm 1.4 lenses, and Canon speedlites.

While Jade and Matthew say of the couple, “Cuties like these two make our job a lot easier,” their philosophy as wedding photographers is to tell a story exactly the way it happened.

“Everything is done as naturally as possible,” says Jade. “We are not afraid of high ISOs because we use Canon 5D Mark IIIs and prime lenses. We believe that an emotional photo that is slightly blurry is a hell of a lot better then a stagy-feeling photo that lacks emotion but has good technical lighting. So you basically have to beat me to use a flash or to use an aperture higher then 2.0. Plus it gives images a more film-like quality that I love, opposed to the sharpness of digital. Matthew has an amazing ability to capture the dancing/booty-shaking scene while using a more open shutter to incorporate the lights in the venue to help give a sense of space and the environment.”

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To see more images from this wedding and others, visit Jade and Matthew’s blog. Visit Brienne’s blog to read about her personal thoughts on this day, plus her “Tale of Two Dresses.”

To submit a Wedding of the Weekemail Jessica Gordon.